New Testament: The Jerusalem Bible / The form and nature of this edition of the Holy Bible have been determined by two of the principal dangers facing the Christian religion today. The first is the reduction of Christianity to the status of a relic - affectionately regarded, it is true, but considered irrelevant to our times. The second is its rejection as a mythology, born and cherished in emotion with nothing at all to say to the mind. What threatens the mother threatens her two children even more seriously: I mean Christianity's adopted child, which it the Old Testament, and her natural child, which is the New. The Bible is of its nature a written charter guaranteed by the Spirit of God, crystallised in antiquity, never to be changed - what is crystallised may be thought by some to be fossilised. Now for Christian thinking in the 20th century two slogans have been adopted: aggiornamento (keeping abreast of the times) and approfondimento (deepening of theological thought). This double programme must be for the Bible too. Its first part can be carried out by translating into the language we use today; its second part by providing notes which are neither sectarian nor superficial. This twofold need has long been appreciated, and strong action was taken in France when, under the influence of the late Pere Chifflot, Editions du Cerf appealed to the Dominican Biblical School in Jerusalem to meet it. This led to the production of separate fascicules with a full textual critical apparatus for the individual books of the Bible, and with extensive notes. Subsequently, in 1956, a 1 volume edition appeared which came to be known as La Bible de Jerusalem: a careful system of cross-reference enabled this edition to include all the information from the fascicules which could be useful to the thoughtful reader or to the student. This present volume is the English equivalent.
